Trump gains significantly in polls
The US presidential election campaign is slowly entering its hot phase. The first debate between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump is scheduled for Tuesday. The latter has received a boost in the last week, including in terms of his poll ratings. A new poll by the Siena Institute showed Trump ahead by two points - a relatively clear lead.
The former president was considered the favorite in the presidential race for months, but then President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. The new candidate, Kamala Harris, unleashed a media storm of positive coverage of the Democrat. It worked, at least in part, because the polls turned around: Trump was no longer far ahead, but very close behind Harris. Both competitors are almost directly next to each other in the polls. There hasn't been such a close presidential race in over 60 years. But now the pendulum is swinging back.
Harris' love affair with the country's major media is now practically over. There is now clear criticism of her proposals, such as the introduction of quasi-socialist price controls on food. Trump, meanwhile, has been able to score successes in the important swing states as well as in the national polls. In the state of Pennsylvania, which is likely to be decisive in the election, the former president has now caught up with Harris. The election forecast by data guru Nate Silver, 538 , now gives him a 46 percent chance of winning the election in November. As recently as the end of August, the forecast estimated Trump's chances at just 40 percent.
In this respect, Tuesday's debate could be decisive for the election. For years, there was a prevailing opinion that the televised debates between the presidential candidates did not make a particularly big difference in the outcome of the election. But this year's debate between Trump and Joe Biden proved the opposite. Biden's disastrous performance started the process that led to Kamala Harris's rise as presidential candidate a few weeks later. That's why the American public will be watching the Democrat's performance particularly closely this time around. Especially because she has hardly given an interview since becoming a presidential candidate.
Trump's momentum is also visible outside of the polls. Last Friday, the sentencing in his hush money trial was postponed until after the election. Trump's team had wanted to achieve this for months, and saw setting the sentence before the election as unfair interference in the election.
The Republican has also recently been able to count on the support of the previously independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He announced that he would suspend his election campaign and have his name removed from the ballots in around ten states. This affects the "swing states" where, according to him, his name on the ballot would be "a disruption". Because the majority of Kennedy's votes, which recently amounted to around five percent, tend to go to Trump, Kennedy's withdrawal in some of the contested states could enable Trump to win.
The calendar leading up to the election is packed with campaign appearances for both candidates. There are no plans for another debate between the two candidates. This is a break with previous tradition. Instead, there is only one debate between the two vice presidential candidates, Tim Walz and JD Vance. On November 5th, it will finally be decided who will govern the USA for the next four years.
Source: Apollo News
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